Drew hit on a great plan re: leveling kids in language classes. We all need to think about whether it is something we would want to fight for in our schools. I personally will, because I think it has the potential to solve a lot of problems. Here is Drew’s four year plan:
I am for a class sequence like this: Beginning Language I/IV (repeatable up to four times) Beginning/Intermediate Language II/IV (repeatable up to three times) Intermediate Language III/IV (repeatable up to two times) AP Language AP Literature Let the kids take a year of beginning and 2 years of beginning/intermediate. Let’s be sure they are ready to move on before we force them to move on. I recently read Laurie saying she teaches a III/IV class (I think) the same way on a rotating curriculum. Brilliant! Don’t want to take AP (I don’t blame you)… Take 2 years of Intermediate then. I promise you’ll learn.
My comment and thank you for asking:
Currently in our system kids get to go on to level 2 with a D and very little knowledge. Some even agree to not go on, but in the falll there they are, ruining our first day smiles, ready to take level 2.They want to go to level 2 because they’re friends are doing it and because they need a credit. But they don’t deserve to move up. To them it is a social thing, but to us it spells another year of trying to teach unmotivated kids using TPRS/CI, which Blaine said can’t be done. This pulls the brighter kids back, which frankly pisses me off as often I have to start a whole story again for one kid whose head is wedged. Drew’s four year plan addresses this problem. In it, the kid is simply not allowed to go on because they are not ready based on the decision of the teacher, which is accurate way beyond the level of accuracy provided by mere grades. Hmmm. That may make too much sense for an educational institution. So next year we all will be teaching, in level 2, blob sucking energy units like Archie unless they are properly intercepted and schooled in rigor and the three modes in the first few weeks.
Given the chance to repeat the language a number of times is a wonderful option for such blobular kids. I am certain that right now all of us have a number of kids in our classes now in May who should be forced by us to quit or stay where they are, but certainly should not be extended the privilege of moving on to the next level, where they will slow down the motivated kids next year again, as they have this year. We have spent much of this year in this venue talking about how to make the method work for unmotivated kids. Something’s not right. There are literally two threads going on simultaneously in our PLC: 1. how to make the pure method work for people actually want to learn a language. 2. how to make the method work with kids who don’t want to learn (like the Archie video). Drew’s plan is marvelous. We all need to implement it. We need to talk about it in our building PLCs. Thank you Drew. This is great. I’ll make the category for multi-level and try to highlight your comment as much as possible.
I am sorry that you guys in LA don’t have district coordinators. You would be a great one because, unlike many of us, you have tact and deference and invite rather than impose. I asked Jason Fritze, by the way, about that and he said that the LA area is just so big and amorphous that WL coordinators don’t happen. Maybe that was Robert that said that.
One comment about the AP literature exam – in French it was not profitable enough for the College Board so they stopped offering it. Stop and think about that for a moment – we are talking about French literature here, which to me is up there on a par with the supremely fine German classical music tradition (it scrapes the heavens) and should therefore be one of the primary goals of any strong WL department.
So the thing to do in all literature systems and screw the College Board, in my opinion, would be to allow the teacher to pick and choose what texts and what centuries they teach – THEIR favorite stuff – which would be even better for the kids bc the teacher would be so happy to not be forced to teach from a list and could do the stuff that they want to do, echoing Rabelais’ inscription over the Abbaye de Thélème – Fais Ce Que Voudras/Do What Thou Wilt. (no, it doesn’t mean what is sounds like).
Now, how are we going to be able to discuss things like deliberated will in terms of the great authors of each of our language traditions unless we adopt Drew’s four year plan at the end of level one? Don’t we deserve to move our kids about ten times faster into the language than we are now just bc the current system of balls and chains is designed that way? Don’t people get what we are capable of now that we are letting the CI dogs loose on language education?
It makes me think of those Latin teachers, in particular, and the potential there. Come ‘on, everyone, let’s get the Drew Plan in place now, so we can get these literature classes in place for our current ninth graders whom we know will easily pass the AP language exam as juniors with a 3 or 4 bc of TCI on their way to the study of literature as seniors.
A prime goal of our work should be literature for seniors and not just language instruction for all. We can do it now. We have the method. We just need to implement the Drew Four Year Plan. So why are you reading this? Go find your department chair or a sympathetic ear in administration and set it up so that the plan is actually in place in the fall.